


of blood, sweat, and bone

by urfriendlyneighborhoodpan



Category: Bleach
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Introspection, Mild Gore, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 12:52:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13054386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/urfriendlyneighborhoodpan/pseuds/urfriendlyneighborhoodpan
Summary: After Aizen's defeat, they are left to rebuild themselves from the rubble.





	of blood, sweat, and bone

**Author's Note:**

> Was on and off writing this for a few months, and I think I'm finally happy with it. Hope you enjoy.

What little order they’d attained was all but in shambles as soon as the sky spit them back into this place. Luxury, as she’d known it, had been pried from her very hands. Reduced to nothing, a bed made of scavenged fabric and lukewarm water wrung into the mouth by desperate, trembling hands. The darkness that had always been had become impenetrable, a cloying thing pressing down on them with a sort of weight sat heaviest at the chest. An all-encompassing, all-seeing, all-knowing force. A wretched god breathing down her neck.

Loly had never questioned her existence; the question and the answer all found in a pair of warm brown eyes, the quirk of a mouth, the amused look of a king watching a humble servant fumble for meaning. Loly had held her hand against the endlessly black sky, its shape so tiny and insignificant she felt her throat constrict all on its own. She had taken to wondering how she could possibly exist in all this _everything—_ standing at the edge of this white and sprawling desert, feeling herself grow smaller. Loly didn’t think she was meant to live her life in servitude, she didn’t think she was meant to bow her head and wait for purpose to be placed upon her; to heed the call of her name like a loyal dog, tail wagging, never doubting her master.

Loly knew one thing. The cold sting of metal around her wrists makes something hot and brilliant and wholly unlike her rear up inside of her. Ready to bite. Something had been bred into her, cultivated by the act of survival. By the time the next war was waged, she did not bend so easily.

.x.

There was a lot of scrambling after the fact, the sky closing its mouth to them a final time and they watching with a dawning hopelessness. The world fell silent, but not the same sort of silent. The palace was a carcass, a gutted beast. Half of them did not make it, would not make it past those first few months of recovery. They would be flung back to the days of old, before strange men with strange skin showed their faces here. Before they had reason or rhyme. Before they were anything more than feral and hungry and full of teeth.

Loly did as she always had.

She scraped by, and only barely.

She had never been the strongest, but instinct rocketed through her every limb and she swiped at the air with more and more accuracy. What was once a measly little dagger, made lethal in her capable hands. She opened throats, she gauged eyes, she bared her teeth and pried someone else’s from their skull. She saw the blood on her once pristine uniform and did not stop to wonder if this was her life now. If she would ever know anything else.

It ends in this way, all at once and with no warning of its coming.

One day, Loly was wiping the viscera from her naked thigh and the next, she was standing upright in a polished room not unlike the first she’d ever been in. This bright and powerful creature sitting not at the throne high above them, but standing among them.

An equal.

.x.

It was an offered choice, not a condition. Direction came in the form of an outstretched hand, a steady gaze, and no expectation to take it. This, to Loly, was a concept she had never entertained in all her life.

And so she did not take it, snatching away with a skipping heart and a favored hand on her blade.

Simple as that, this Tier Harribel redirected her attention and did not press it.

An offered choice, an open door. Loly drew back into the approaching crowd, deeper and deeper until she was watching from a distance. Shaking, uncertain. Oh, she’d never craved something more—to wash her hair, to change out of these stiff, sticky clothes, to catch her reflection and not be afraid of what stared back—but there was no guarantee of safety here. She remembered a time before strange men and strange skin and strange smiles, she remembered a time before reason or rhyme. She remembered what it was like to be ruled by one of their own, and she remembered the fear that followed her day by day.

At least, with Aizen, there had been the option of going unnoticed. Of being so unimportant, so undeserving of attention one could slip under the radar without harm done.

She had seen whole movement made, impossible during the reign before, gone unacknowledged. Not for the lack of being able to stop it, but for the triviality of the matter. The complete disinterest in unraveling it; the lack of fear of being overthrown.

Tier Harribel was nothing like either of those men. She did not promise war. She did not promise peace.

She told them change was coming.

.x.

Loly made herself a home out of the leftovers, some unnatural cave formed out of the rubble left behind by that boy—that child, that human, that _vermin_ —and slipped in and out of it out of necessity. It was not a highly coveted place, it was cold and dark and this was the only reason she chose it. She came and went and her things went untouched, and this was where Menoly found her.

Menoly was no stronger than she, of the two she was in worse condition—there had been times she’d returned with a face so deformed Loly had reached for her weapon without a second thought. Every now and again she appeared with something to eat, something she’d caught for the both of them. Sometimes she’d come empty-handed, stomach snarling, and Loly gave over what she had.

Survival has a way of carving into the core of them, exposing the parts they never considered exposing. A bare throat, the underbelly, a throbbing heart.

A throbbing heart.

Loly dipped a bit of fabric into what little water she had saved for herself, and dabbed at the open wounds on Menoly’s face, or shoulder, or ribs, or thigh. She never said a single word, and she found she didn’t need to. Menoly watched the shadows stretch across the slanted wall before her, listless, hardly even wincing when the skin strained over a gash.

“There are beds,” Menoly said, voice coarse from disuse. “She has beds, and food.”

Loly wrung the blood from the rag. “Then go.”

“Don’t be like that,” Menoly reprimanded, but with none of the bite. “You’re tired, too.”

Nobody had a set internal clock, there was no day to this night. Only a few scraped together hours of rest, tucked into the darkness with the baseless hope of surviving it. Loly could not remember the last time she’d closed her eyes to sleep, her head spun if she stood too quick and the nerves had pinched themselves tight along her temples and forehead. She wet her lips and tossed aside the rag, unwilling to give.

Menoly searched her face, frowning, and then sighed. “Suit yourself.” She struggled to her feet, but Loly did not offer help. “I’ll be back soon. I’ll let you know if it’s worth the effort.”

Loly nodded, once, and waited until she disappeared to wrap her arms around her knees.

.x.

Tier Harribel turned away no one at the door, but she was so rarely present in this palace she wouldn’t have the chance to regardless. The medical wards had never been particularly large, only just spacious enough for the one or two minor cases. After all, at one point or another, one stopped being valuable if broken enough. For this reason, Tier Harribel had repurposed whole halls for the wounded, slabs and slabs of groaning, twitching bodies being pieced back together by silent, dutiful medics. In one of them, Loly found Menoly being stitched up; clean, in a fresh uniform, with bandages wrapping more than half her body.

It had only been days since they last saw one another, but she was looking much better than before.

Upon spotting her, Menoly brightened up immediately. “Couldn’t stay away?”

“You didn’t come back.”

Menoly cracked a guilty smile. “They wouldn’t let me. Their goal is recovery—that’s why she isn’t here. They’re searching for the rest, so they can help us.”

Loly was given a room almost on the other side of the palace, where those who needed little to no medical attention were sent to rest. A simple room, a single bed and a tiny bathroom and a narrow window to look out of. Loly spent an hour under the running water scrubbing her skin raw, watching the dried blood swirl down the drain with a squinted eye. She pulled on fresh clothes just as a knock came from the door, some unnamed underling informing her of the mess hall hours. Loly showed, ate as much as they offered her, and returned to her room wordlessly.

She flung herself onto the bed and, within seconds, was out cold.

.x.

She was allowed to leave as she pleased, faces she had never seen before passing her by in the hallways and she keeping to the walls with a sharp, suspicious frown. Hand always stayed on the handle of her blade.

Loly didn’t have a purpose, here. She didn’t know what her next step was. Food was provided in abundance, there was no scramble for firsts here. Luxury came in slivers but it was there, a mattress and a full belly and a roof over their heads. She stretched and sighed and pretended this was okay, pretended she was okay. They were not a species known for their conscience, she could not stew in the things she had done for survival. She could only move on, accept that they were an act of necessity, and ignore the images forever imprinted into the forefront of her mind.

The tear of bone, the gurgle of blood in the throat, the slick of an eyeball crushed under her fist—all of it, something she must brush off herself like strands of hair caught on her clothes.

Loly didn’t meet Tier Harribel for months, fully taking advantage of her generosity but never once trusting the hand that fed her. The first time, it was out on the balcony that had once belonged to Aizen, overlooking the great expanse of the desert. She had been staring out into the abysmal sky, not quite thinking or feeling much of anything. Mind blissfully blank, fists clenched hard enough to hurt.

Tier Harribel, appearing as if from thin air. This woman, grander than life, had arrived quieter than a whisper. Arms folded, gaze as steady and cool as ever.

Loly backed up, words caught up, but Tier Harribel only waved her off. Slowly, gracefully, her hand lifting from the crook of her arm and returning in one fluid motion. She came to stand beside her, silently, and Loly had to force herself to relax back into passivity. Shoulders taut, fingers clammy.

This woman did not look as if she belonged here. Loly had stood within the sanctuary and she remembered its bright blue sky, its golden sun, its drifting clouds. Tier Harribel looked kinda like the sun, she thought. Warm, golden, radiant.

Impractical, unnatural in this world.

“You are the one that served directly under Aizen,” Tier Harribel spoke first, voice a low, smooth rumble. The way she imagined velvet felt. “The little one.”

Loly didn’t know how she could have possibly recognized her. “Yes,” she said slowly, looking away, arms hugging herself tightly.

“What kept you?”

Loly squinted up at Tier Harribel, as if trying to read her. Her gaze never wavered, never betrayed her thoughts. It unsettled Loly. “Sounded too good to be true.”

Tier Harribel considered her for just a moment too long, a sidelong look like she couldn’t get a handle of her. This silence sat overflowing with some emotion Loly could not begin to fathom. She could not remember a time Tier Harribel had ever looked at her, square in the eye. The highest she’d ever set her sights was the ground at his feet. Everything else had washed away and honestly, honestly, Loly could not comprehend how she could’ve thought it was a better sight than this.

Tier Harribel, fiery hair fallen over her sharp green eyes, staring at her as if for the first time.

Perhaps she was.

“I wanted,” Tier Harribel murmured, velvet-smooth voice running itself over Loly’s nerves, “to remind ourselves that we are still worth something of value.”

This wasn’t what Loly expected to hear. She ran her palm over her mask fragment, unable to look at the other woman.

“I know how it felt, waking up back here,” Tier Harribel continued. “But we were here before them. And we will continue to be, long after.”

.x.

It wasn’t a long reign, but then Loly would argue it wasn’t one. She came and went as she pleased and nobody stopped her, the desert as unforgiving as it had always been but the palace a new haven it never had been. There was no fear of stepping out of line, of displeasing someone. Tier Harribel was an absent ruler, only truly conveying her strength at the most necessary.

And here, Tier Harribel was the strongest creature in Hueco Mundo. There was no argument there. The strongest of their ranks had been slaughtered at the front, with Tier Harribel the lone survivor. A scar trailed across her abdomen, at first an angry red and then, eventually, a paling pink. There was never a show of hiding this, a marker worn for all to see that their new queen could, in fact, bleed and scab.

A confession and a warning all at once, a loud and glaring reminder that she was here, alive, despite.

Loly caught herself staring at it, at first with distaste and then, and then—well, she wasn’t sure what. It had drawn her eye magnetically, burned into her retina. This golden brown skin, the taut lines of muscle and the shadows dipped between them, interrupted by this jagged line of discoloration. Loly imagined how much it must’ve hurt, how it strained and snapped through her—Tier Harribel, for a second, staring into the eyes of the man that had promised her everything, unable to comprehend where this could have possibly come from,

Loly sometimes woke in a daze, eyelids stuck, lifting her head from a pillow soaked in drool. There was something maddening in routine, and like clockwork she rose from her bed to fill her stomach with food she had not captured herself. One day, she thought about visiting the room with the sun.

See, lately, Loly hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it. Its radiance, its artificial warmth, its faux sanctuary. Oh, she knew it’d been destroyed in the battle. She knew she’d stand under its great black dome and feel her stomach sink right down to her feet.

But she went anyway, twisting at the hem of her skirt the whole way there.

.x.

The passage of time was hard to keep track of. It always had been. The night never ended, this was one long, uninterrupted series of events. An existence forever caught in its own web, its own vicious cycle. Loly closed her eye, opened it, long before she had this form she had lived her life burrowed under the sand. Many of them had, this ongoing struggle for survival that had never truly ceased. The name of the game had changed, but the rules never had. She had never gotten the chance to ask the strongest of them what their life had been like before, already a sensitive subject amongst equals.

Loly counted the days at first by the amount of times she’d closed her eye, opened it, but this quickly became undependable. It was a blur long before she was aware of it, a dreamless state of mind. One moment melded into the next so flawlessly, Loly couldn’t find distinction even if she brought herself to try.

Menoly had gotten better, she knew that much. One day she was lying in the medical ward wincing under a pair of methodical hands, the next she was sitting next to her in the mess hall stuffing her face without a single care in the world. Ravenous, almost, to have something solid in her stomach now that she’d gotten the green light. They shared a room, for a time. Sometimes the same bed, sometimes not. There were less beds to spare now and so that must mean strides had been made.

This was the way Loly had begun to track time, a month would pass between each sighting, each whisper of _she’s back, she’s back_ , and in this way Loly had deduced she’d been in this place for a total of five months. Doing the same thing, day after day, for five months. Tier Harribel had only recently taken to appearing more than once a month, and this threw off Loly’s perception of time so hard she felt herself reeling.

Twice a month, and then twice a week, and then more than once a day—Loly caught herself craning her neck at the barest flash of electric hair or golden brown skin. She didn’t know what any of this meant, why she had become so fixated on this woman, this _stranger_. There was a disconnect here, Loly rubbing at her temples with a grimace as it became abundantly clear she wouldn’t be getting her out of her head any time soon.

And Loly didn’t think she’d dreamt before. Loly didn’t remember a single time anything other than a solid, listless black waited for her when she closed her eye. But now, now she lied down to sleep with a new sort of apprehension.

Now, when Loly closed her eye it was with the anticipation of seeing the same damn face she’d been seeing for what she thinks might be the past two months. Or maybe since day one.

She didn’t think she could admit either one to herself.

.x.

Tier Harribel was standing under the broken dome of the room with the sun, face upturned toward the cracks where the sun once glared back at them. Loly paused on her way in, not having expected to find anyone else here and wholly surprised by her find. If there was anything she’d imagined finding here, Tier Harribel was the very last one.

Loly considered the sight, while she still could. She thought maybe before this room had gone to hell, it would have befitted Tier Harribel. The brilliant sun casting her in all sorts of golden colors, softening those green eyes to blue. Now, it was a haunting picture. Where the sun once sat was an ugly, jagged hole, through which this impenetrable black seeped through to paint the room with smears of itself; long, broken, awkward strokes of shadow over the bone white sand. It fell over Tier Harribel like a cloak, minimized her in ways Loly had never thought possible.

Where once she looked grander than life, Tier Harribel had been made miniscule. Insignificant.

Just like Loly.

“I know you’re there,” Tier Harribel called out, her voice a booming thing in this thick, unmoving quiet. Loly jolted back in surprised, but was already locked in place by the sideways glance thrown at her from over the shoulder. “Did you need something?”

Loly hesitated, speechless, but decided against slinking back into the darkness. It was what she would’ve done before, and as far as she was concerned that part of her should stay in the past where it belonged. “No, I…don’t need anything,” she said, inching forward. “I was just passing through. Surprised to…see you here.”

Tier Harribel hummed, almost dismissive. “The boy fought the Sexta here,” she said, folding her arms. “I was there, watching. He was…something else.”

Loly glanced away, frowning. The kid wasn’t exactly a welcome thought.

“I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately,” Tier Harribel continued, with a sigh. “How exceptional, to grow so much in so little time. When he fought the Sexta, he struggled terribly. But the next time I saw him, he was facing Aizen—and he won.”

She reached up, smoothed down her hair, and then tugged very gently. Loly watched the movement silently, mouth going inexplicably dry.

“I wonder if it’s a matter of him being so young, or because he’s human.”

Loly lifted her chin, catching onto the end of that statement, confused.

“Have you ever wondered about those humans?” she asked, and this didn’t entirely seemed directed at Loly. “What great things they were capable of, how much change they could bring in so little time? Years we’ve been under Aizen’s thumb, and in less than a fraction of that, they dismantled him. I have…thought about this many times.”

“I don’t think about them,” Loly said honestly, and this seemed to catch Tier Harribel off guard. Shoulders tensing, head turning just a slight to indicate she was listening. “I don’t like thinking about them. A few months ago I would have argued this place went to shit after the war, but I’ve changed my mind. I like this place, I like what you’ve made it into. Even if it gives us the false impression of peace, you’ve made us feel _safe_ … And that’s something Aizen never gave us. I can admit that now.”

There was this strange heaviness hanging over them the more Loly spoke, Tier Harribel turning her head just enough she could see her profile; her long lashes, the collar of her shirt obscuring her mask fragment.  

“But I don’t like thinking about those humans. They never belonged here—none of them did, especially not the Shinigami.” Loly crossed her arms, looking away. “I don’t care how much they’ve _liberated_ us. I hated that girl, and I hated that boy, and my feelings haven’t changed since they’ve left.”

“How closed-minded of you,” Tier Harribel said, and Loly immediately felt her heart sink.

She couldn’t explain that either.

“You are alive because of them,” she said, voice like steel. Ice against Loly’s nerves. “Do you think Aizen would have left this place untouched, had he reached his ultimate goal? Do you _know_ what his ultimate goal was?”

Loly faltered, mouth opening and then closing wordlessly. It felt as if, finally, Tier Harribel was looking down on her. It twisted through her terribly and she couldn’t bring herself to meet her gaze.

“If that boy had not stopped him, everything you knew would cease to exist,” she snapped, whipping her hand out to gesture at the desert lying behind her. At what extended beyond this dome. “Regardless of what they are, these humans had saved us from more than just starvation.”

“I never said they _didn’t_ ,” Loly found herself tossing back, and then caught herself.

But Tier Harribel wasn’t stopping her, the hard look in her eyes had given to curiosity and Loly had to finish her thought.

“I never said they didn’t,” she mumbled, embarrassed. “I just…wish it had been us. I wish we’d been the ones to stop him, to take back our home.”

Tier Harribel didn’t say anything for a few very long, very tense moments. It took every bone in her body to look at her again, and the sight itself was breathtaking.

Her eyes, gleaming emeralds, were tight with understanding. Something desperate and miserable and just as scared as she. Her brows furrowed, her hands clenched, Tier Harribel reminded Loly of herself almost. Full of something twisted. Not quite hope, not quite defeat, but something almost in between.

Loly realized this couldn’t have been an easy job, piecing all of them back together all by herself, and it was now it became clear just how difficult it had been. Tier Harribel was crumbling under the pressure, and now upon realizing she was not alone in her bitterness, it all came crashing down on her.

Loly’s mouth snapped shut, watching the pull of a hand through yellow hair. The clench of a fist, eyes squeezing shut as air rasped through teeth. If they were capable of tears, Loly didn’t doubt Tier Harribel would be crying.

“I want to believe I would have accepted freedom at any cost, and through any means,” Tier Harribel said, voice tight. “But I agree with you. A deeper part of me would have wanted nothing more than to see Aizen fall at my own hands. I wasn’t strong enough, I’m still not strong enough. Looking at this boy through the eyes of resentment would mean accepting my delusions, pretending that I could have done it myself. But accepting that I couldn’t have means admitting my weakness, turning this boy into the hero he really is, regardless of how little we meant to him. Or how different we are from each other. Through him, and through that girl, we were able to achieve some sort of peace.”

She looked at Loly now, resolved.

“No matter how much I wish it had been me, it won’t change the fact that it hadn’t been.”

.x.

Loly could not stop thinking about her, and she figured she knew why now.

“I’m in love with her,” she told Menoly, with no infliction in her voice. She lied on her bed staring at the ceiling, her chest filled with emotion. This was the one thing she could say with absolute certainty. Nothing, ever, had felt so right to say.

Menoly looked at her for a long moment, sitting on the edge of her bed with her chin in her hand. Gaze pensive, but unsurprised. “I see.”

“You knew.”

“The way you look at her is a giveaway,” Menoly said, straightening up. “It’s like you can’t _stop_ looking at her, but also like you don’t want to.”

“So, the way I used to look at—”

“No. I wouldn’t compare them. You idealized Aizen,” Menoly said. “Harribel does not hide her intentions. And really, you’ve interacted with her more often than we ever did with him.”

.x.

Tier Harribel had been managing the palace on a more personal level. Things ran as smooth as they could, all things considered. Those who had opposed her at the beginning had dwindled down to nothing, half brought in by hospitality and the rest stubbornly sulking away in the unforgiving desert.

It wasn’t perfect, there would always be the fear that it would end sooner rather than later. No matter how idyllic it became, it always felt temporary. The calm before the storm.

Ten months in, Loly began to feel as if this paranoia gnawing at the base of her chest would never truly ebb. It rose at the first sign of distress, swallowed up her newly formed convictions like a bottomless chasm. She wandered the halls restlessly for most of the day, half of them were given tasks to do based on their skills and sometimes Loly became depressed by how open her schedule was. The medical ward running smoothly, palace spotless, Loly searched one end to another and came up empty handed.

“Ask her if she has anything,” Loly caught Menoly’s sleeve, voice strained. “I’m going crazy here.”

“Ask her yourself,” Menoly shrugged her off. She’d been assigned to assist the medical ward, and she was gone often. “Prove that you can be assertive.”

Loly didn’t know what section of the palace Tier Harribel had claimed her own. Some said she had returned to her old chambers and others claimed she had taken up Aizen’s, but Loly didn’t think either was true. Many things had been destroyed in the war, and a large chunk of what was once Tier Harribel’s residence had been completely decimated in the fray. It stood empty, wind singing through the cracks in the walls.

“Take me to her,” Loly rushed out as soon as she came across one of those lackeys. The tall one, with the dark brown skin and the wild mane of hair.

Mila Rose, frowning her full lips as she gave Loly the once over. “What business do you have with Harribel?”

“That’s between me and her,” Loly mumbled, losing some of her bravado under the cool gaze of the taller woman.

Mila Rose regarded her, one hand curling over her hip and a fine black brow cocking upward. It took but a moment, but finally Mila Rose scoffed, “Fine. Follow me.”

The highest point of the palace was a sort of watchtower only frequented by the lowest of servants. Their job was to alert when danger approached, which was never. The panel locking the room into the wall slid open with a faint screech and there beyond was a small and elaborate setup; cushions for bed, a table pushed against the furthest wall, and a collection of fabric piled by the door. It was simple, almost depressing.

At the table sat a sleek, quiet woman with dark hair and snow white skin. She fiddled with the teapot, her hands obscured by a pair of long sleeves. And on the cushions, another woman with a sturdier build was flung onto her back yawning loudly into the air. They were so at home here, Loly thought maybe she’d been tricked.

But there, sitting on this window ledge, Tier Harribel lifted her head to watch the pair enter her room. Eyes flickering, head tilting, the question left unspoken.

“She wants to speak with you,” Mila Rose said around a smile.

Loly felt immensely stupid. Standing here before the very woman she’d been haunted by, day and night, without any good reason to be.

That is, until Tier Harribel told them, “Give us some privacy.”

Tier Harribel gestured toward the newly opened seat at the table as soon as her companions had left them, resettling on the window ledge with a lean favoring Loly. The moonlight spilling through the window illuminated her in such a way, Loly wondered if she was ever _not_ breathtaking.

This was a dangerous thought.

“What is it?” Tier Harribel asked, addressing her with her full attention.

Disconcerting. “I need more things to do,” Loly said, hands folded on her lap. “I’m…losing my mind here. I never do anything. I never lift a finger. It’s driving me up the wall.”

Tier Harribel hummed, thoughtful. “I was under the impression you’d prefer that.”

Loly paused. “What?”

A shrug, noncommittal. “I only assumed. I shouldn’t have. I apologize.”

“This is…all because of you?”

“There are a few special cases I oversee,” Tier Harribel said, all the while Loly swallowed the strange rise of emotion in her throat. “Yours being one of them. You have…interested me. I assumed, given your character, you wouldn’t enjoy menial everyday tasks.”

She unfolded from the window ledge smoothly.

“I didn’t expect you to come to me about this, but I should have.”

“I – I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be, I have a task for you.”

“You…do?”

“You’ll come with me,” Tier Harribel said, approaching. “I have some things I need to attend to on the outer skirts. I need the company.”

.x.

She most certainly did not need the company. Nowhere did Tier Harribel travel without her companions, and this was no exception. She was flanked, as always, on all sides by her less than welcoming companions. Loly didn’t bother hesitating, though the thought crossed her mind for a moment as she met with them the next day. At the greater entrance of the palace, they embark on their journey with little ceremony.

It would be a long walk, and quickly it became obvious they had their own ways of keeping occupied. The three underlings bickered among themselves incessantly, and Tier Harribel did little to stop them. Loly found herself keeping to her side, only partially convincing herself it was because of the discomfort they instilled in her. Before them the desert unraveled like an endless ocean, dipped in shadows where the sand sunk deep into itself and gleaming white where it rose higher than a building. Loly glanced listlessly between the scant protrusion of bone thin trees, jagged boulders, and the quick scattering of sand as a critter smaller than her own hand scampered out of sight. She felt herself growing bored at the procession, tuning in and out of the conversation.

“Do you find this tedious?”

Loly started, whipping her head around to find a pair of cool, green eyes watching her. This look of amusement came about them, a subtle narrowing at the corners. The others had dragged on ahead of them, but they had hardly covered any ground. She folded her arms and averted her gaze quickly. “Of course not.”

“It’s fine,” Tier Harribel assured, keeping pace. “There was much to do at the beginning, I surely could have used your help then. This is nothing more than protocol now.”

“Then why go?”

The taller woman hummed thoughtfully, facing onward. “Many of us hadn’t made it back here. Many had run away into the desert in fear. They do not know they have somewhere to come back to.”

“This can’t be the only place,” Loly said, thinking of her shabby cave of crumbled building.

“No, of course not. I don’t think of Las Noches as a beacon. It is a choice, an option. Many of us have found refuge elsewhere, and they are most content remaining where they are. But the rest have been left to fend for themselves. And those, I invite into our care.”

Loly gave the other woman a long look. She wanted to ask if she had appeared one of them, if she had seemed unable to care for herself. Loly knew she hadn’t been the most pleasant sight—she shuddered to even think of it—but it galled her to think for even a second that Tier Harribel had seen her, then, and thought, _Pathetic._

She turned away, screwing her mouth shut.

Ahead of them, the other three continued their bickering.

.x.

There was this small village on the very outskirts of Tier Harribel’s jurisdiction. They clambered away at the sight of them, but they made no chase. Homes were crafted from spare fabric, the hides of slain beasts, and the bones they licked clean. One or two had recognizable faces, the rest were mere shadows in the night. There was a measly fire going in some dug in pit, the putrid smell of rotted meat being cooked, again, to share. Loly passed between their encampments, mouth dry. Some of them, she realized, looked just like she had.

She turned on her heel to watch Tier Harribel move about, crouching to place a gentle hand on the back of some hunched over figure. Her voice a soothing murmur. She wondered if she would have done the same for her, snarling teeth and caked in blood and all. Again and again, Tier Harribel was rejected, hand slapped away by some paranoid nobody. Loly watched silently from this safe distance, holding herself tight. She did not want to participate.

The other three had dispersed among the village, repeating the same words and receiving the same treatment. Loly wondered why they even tried, the entirety of the village had begun to congregate against the opposite end of their encampment, away from their paths.

She shifted her weight, suddenly taken by some thread of indignation. If it had been her, she would wrenched the hand before it struck her. She would have left them all here to rot.

She sought Tier Harribel out among them. “Why are you even trying? They obviously don’t want to be helped.”

“One of them might,” she said, not looking at her. “That’s all that matters.”

No, they left the village empty-handed, and the journey back was much quieter.

.x.

Tier Harribel gave Loly odd jobs. Some days she was alongside Menoly in the medical wards, though this particular job was becoming less and less necessary as it was. Other days, she was out for the hunt, dragging back meals for the whole of the palace. Months ago, Loly would have never imagined herself in this position, servicing others of her kind like this. Her hands had become calloused, ugly things. Broken into by tools and bone and writhing things. She held them up for Menoly to tend to, wincing less and less each time she did.

Once in a while, Loly accompanied Tier Harribel on her trips. A silent audience to both failure and success, she couldn’t fathom why she had become a fixture in their outings, contributing as little as she did. She hardly spared more than a cursory glance at the less fortunate; perhaps, she thought, she was becoming numbed to it.

Twelve months, living here in this place with no true master. Loly had regained some semblance of her former self, upper lip curled, fingers twiddling the end of one long, trailing pigtail. Maybe there’d be no true salvation, maybe part of her will be forever lost in the ether; a black mass interwoven with the things she had done, what survival had driven her to. Caked underneath her fingernails, forever, remained the dried blood of some creature carved into by her own hands. Their innards stuck at the backs of her teeth. She will always taste them, they will always coat her tongue.

“What troubles you?” Tier Harribel asked, at the tail end of a failed trip. “You seem more out of sorts than usual.”

Loly didn’t want to respond. There were a lot of things she did not share in common with this woman. Trauma left a mark on Loly; Tier Harribel treated her own as if it were an old friend. Loly placed a palm against her abdomen, a teardrop of a navel uninterrupted by muscle. She was a measly thing, nothing more than a delicate string strung tight. Tier Harribel was chipped from marble; Loly had never seen her in any other form but the one, but she assumed she was perfection. Underneath all that fabric, all that fragment.

Loly shook herself of the thought.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, not meeting her gaze, “about why I did the things I did. Why I thought the way I used to.”

She paused, gathering herself. The palace was within view, but it meant little. It would be a long while before they reached it.

“What compelled me,” she said, lowering her voice, “to say and do and think the things I did?”

Tier Harribel watched her, as she so often seemed to do, and offered no answer. Perhaps she simply didn’t have an answer to give.

“I squandered myself to please someone else,” Loly said, numbly. “Who could I have been if I hadn’t?”

Loly started, violently, when a hand settled on her shoulder. It was the lightest of the touches, fingertips masked in fabric brushing against her skin, a palm curving over, a grip so gentle Loly almost could not feel it. She jerked her gaze to the taller woman, throat closing, eye widening impossibly. She could not breathe, entirely fixated on the cool green eyes settled carefully upon her.

The entire world seemed to fall away from her.

“Do not undermine yourself,” Tier Harribel told her, squeezing ever so slightly. “You are so much more than you believe.”

Loly let out a sharp gust of air as Tier Harribel dropped her hand, moving onward. Planted in her spot, she continued to stare at the space the other woman had just been. And then, as if a valve had been released, she was flooded with unbidden emotion. Warmth spilled across her face, painted her cheeks hot and plummeted to the pit of her stomach. She clenched her fists and realized, with horror, that she would never again feel for anyone else what she was feeling now, at this moment, for this woman.

How could anyone, ever, possibly compare.

.x.

“Oh, you’re never getting over her,” Menoly said, lying on her stomach on Loly’s bed turning a page in some borrowed novel. Aizen kept many of them in his room, and they held little interest for most of their kind. Some had scavenged through his belongings for things of interest. Menoly had settled on the mundane. Sometimes, she read aloud as she went. Loly would listen with half an ear, but mostly the droning would keep her occupied. There was little to do beyond menial tasks; less and less she was called to accompany Tier Harribel and her trio out into the desert. It was becoming unnecessary.

And it was driving Loly mad with longing.

“Visit her,” Menoly advised, marking her place in the book with a scrap of paper. “I’m sure you’re close enough.”

“Impossible,” Loly scoffed, pretending not to consider it. “She’s never without her fracciónes. I will never get a word in.”

“Stop making excuses.”

Loly examined the folds of her skirt, uncertain of herself. More than a year now, she has lived in this place. It has become her home in ways it never had. Nobody is on the friendliest of terms, but Loly can no longer be pried from this place. She is so terribly in love, her heart beats within these walls. It sits at its highest point, twisting into itself the longer she goes without revealing herself to that woman—cool, placid, beautiful Tier Harribel. She swallows around some lump in her throat, suddenly rendered miniscule by her own emotions. She burned all over, she had to tell her.

But she was afraid of how she’d react to her feelings.

“I don’t know if I should,” Loly confessed, sinking down onto the mattress beside Menoly. “She is… I don’t know how to approach her.”

Menoly turned a page in the novel.

“I don’t want to ruin anything. She probably just sees me as a friend.”

Menoly leaned her chin on one hand.

“I know I’m being a coward,” she said, ducking her head. “But what if I lose her in the process?”

Menoly tilted her head, and slowly met Loly’s gaze, unamused.

“Fine.”

.x.

She smoothed the fly-away strands of her hair as she climbed the stairwell to the tower. The attention has shifted from outward to in, there was a measure of loyalty to Tier Harribel much unlike what they held for Aizen. It was less fueled by fear and more, she thought, planted in respect. Tier Harribel spoke often about what their future held, how they could expand into something much greater, much stronger at is base. There was whisper of war, waged against one another. But only Loly knew better. On the occasion she had a moment with Tier Harribel to speak, she listened to her plans with bated breath.

“We will not be left in peace forever,” Tier Harribel had sighed. “We have clashed with the Shinigami for as long as time has stood. We will never coexist. One day, they will return to clean us out as they had always intended. I do not want to resort to violence, but I cannot say we will not be eradicated if we do not defend ourselves.”

This resulted in a new offer, the sparring rooms reopened for use. The invitation was there.

Loly had been one of the few to decline.

“Back again, are you?” Mila Rose greeted, but the sneer was not unwelcoming. “Like a pest.”

Inside, they were missing one of their numbers. Loly didn’t have to ask to know, it was rare the she could not be found training. Even rarer Mile Rose was not with her. This was soon remedied, as their superior asked them for privacy once more. Mila Rose exchanged glances with the other woman, and then departed with an exasperated chuckle.

“I suppose there’s no harm in refining what is already perfect,” she said, flexing her impressive muscles. “Come, Sung-Sun. Let us meet in battle. I have missed your finesse.”

The door shut, and Loly moved toward the table without being asked to. In her usual spot on the window ledge, Tier Harribel stretched until her spine was curved into the frame. The movement guided Loly’s gaze and she cleared her throat, glancing away in shame of herself. This room was always dark, spilled into by the milky room right down the middle.

“I feel change coming,” Tier Harribel confessed, watching the complete lack of movement outside. “I don’t know how long it will be until I am at ease again. I don’t know how long it’s been since I last had been. I do not sleep, I hardly eat. Something is coming, and I am afraid of what it could be.”

Loly frowned. She had come here with an objective but at once she felt the urge to set it aside. How long had she been gathering the courage within herself? How long had she suffered in silence? How many times had she run away from her own feelings? Here in the face of Tier Harribel’s distress, it held so little importance.

Forgetting herself for the moment, Loly surged forward to take one of her hands between both her own. A firm grip, Loly came to her knees to level Tier Harribel’s startled eyes. Now was not the time to shy away.

“You will be ready for it when it comes, whatever it is,” Loly said, voice so certain she almost does not recognize herself in it. “You are strong.”

Their kind were admittedly simple creatures. They were led and driven by the strong, the able, the powerful. She could not remember a time they were not ruled over by someone much, much stronger. This hierarchy was an unbreakable chain, and Loly realized this would never not be the case. One day, Tier Harribel would no longer be their greatest. Someone much stronger would oppose her, and there was no telling when. This she knew, because Aizen had been on an immeasurable scale, and even he had fallen from his throne. Loly would not allow herself to place all of her faith in Tier Harribel. She knew how her heart would splinter. But here, now, Loly knew.

Tier Harribel, too, was unbreakable.

“Do not abandon us,” Loly pleaded, some shivering, helpless thing rearing up from deep, deep inside her. “And we will not abandon you.”

A careful hand curled over the backs of hers, a comforting gesture. Perhaps the scales had been tipped. In attempting to reassure, Loly was in turn in need of reassurance. The look in Tier Harribel’s eyes was warm. It left Loly breathless. “I had never imagined a confidant in you, Loly Aivirrne. You have truly astounded me.”

And then, in some unexpected show of affection, Tier Harribel cupped the sides of her hands and brought them up to her face. Her knuckles, pressed ever so gently to her mask fragment, right where her mouth would be. A slow and tender kiss, over far too quick. Tier Harribel rose her head and dropped their joined hands back into her lap.

But did not let go.

.x.


End file.
